No, her coyote was whining and writhing in…invitation.
“Oh,” Martha breathed.
He was so tall, she couldn’t see his face until he tipped his head down. He had the most striking features she’d ever seen—not conventionally handsome, with his heavy brow and wide jaw, but arresting. A strong will had shaped those weathered lines, over long, difficult years. His iron-gray hair was sheared brutally short, like an army recruit’s. There was something military too about his perfectly still, straight-backed stance.
His deep-set eyes met hers. They were as gray as his hair, hard as tempered steel.
“You,” he rasped.
“Oh no.” Martha scrabbled off the side of the deckchair, heedless of dignity. “Nope, nope, nope.”
The man’s impassive expression never changed. Not an eyelid flickered, not a muscle twitched.
“No!” Martha yelped, and fled from her one true mate.
Chapter 3
Naturally, she ran away from him.
Sharks rarely had true mates. They were too independent, too individualistic, for such pair-bonding. Brief, fierce liaisons, fleeting moments of contact in a life of silent, solitary wandering—that was the way of sharks.
And he was the Master Shark. He was the shark. The heart and soul of his people.
No wonder his mate had taken one look at him, and shown him her heels.
“Hey.”
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from his mate’s retreating back. So little, so soft, yet so swift and fierce. Brown and ripened by a lifetime spent under open, cloudless skies. She smelled of things he’d never known: sun-warmed fur and long summer days, dry desert winds and laughter rising to the moon.
“Hey,” the bartender said again from behind him. “Is there some sort of problem here…sir?”
His mate had disappeared behind a concealing wall of greenery. The Master Shark turned at last, looking down at the bartender. To his credit, the bear shifter didn’t back down, although his feet set in a defensive stance.
“No,” he told the bartender, flatly.
“Begging your pardon, that’s not what it looks like to me.” The bear shifter held a large, iced drink in each hand, and looked fully prepared to employ them as weapons if necessary. “What did you do to make her run off like her tail was on fire?”
The Master Shark stared at him, silently.
“I guess that answers that question,” the bartender muttered. He raised his voice again, meeting the Master Shark’s eyes without flinching. “Look, I know who you are, and honestly, I don’t care. You can’t go around terrorizing other guests.”
He was well-used to other shifters treating him with suspicion. It was inevitable, given what he was. Nonetheless, his back stiffened at the inadvertent accusation that he might ever even think of threatening his mate.
“That was not my intention,” he said coldly. “I merely wished to…”
He stalled, words drying in his throat. What had he intended?
He didn’t know himself. All he’d known was that the instant he’d set foot on the island, he’d been pulled by a blood-scent more compelling than any he’d ever known. He could no more not have followed that siren call than he could stop swimming.
And he had found her. And she had fled from him.
The bartender grimaced, his tense body language relaxing a bit. “Well, whatever you intended, clearly all you succeeded in doing was terrifying that nice lady. I think it would be better if you just left her alone from now on, okay?”
“She is my mate.”
The bear shifter’s mouth hung open for a second. “No shit?”
“No,” the Master Shark looked back in the direction his mate had vanished, “as you say, shit.”